Book Reviews

BOOK REVIEWS Rule by Incarnation: Tibetan Buddhi~m and its Role in Society and State. By Franz Michael. Boulder: We&tview Press, 1982. Pp. XII, 227, maps, illustrations. "In Tibet Buddhist monks had the same rights as the laymen to be appointed state officials both military and civil". Thus wrote in IJ69 the official chronicler for the Yuan dynasty. Th(~ 'barbarian' dynasty was overthrown by a Han dynasty in IJ68. The official chro nicler though a 'barbarian' - a Mongol (Yuan in Han diction)-confor med to the Confucian tradition in letter and spirit. The presence of monks in official ranks, both civil and military, was no doubt a barbarian affair and the Han scholars and bureaucrat5 h~ve through centuries main tained an attitude of contempt, hostility and indifference towards the Tibetan political system. Nothing unmual for a people ,,,,,ho called all foreigners barb.:1.rians and designated their land as 'celestial'. It is rele vant to recall that even in the most prosperous days of Buddhism in China, that is, the Tang Period, Gautama Buddha was descrilx~d by the Confucian literati as a barbarian ""ho "wore a barbarian dress and taught a barbarian doctrine". The H,m traditiona]j~(s were no doubt relieved when Buddhism ceased to be a dominant religion in China and never again any Han dynastry sought salvation outside ancestor wor ship and Confucian code. The confrontation later was outside China, in Tibet and Mon golia. The confrontation was mainly 011 the material plane involving economic and political interests of the Celestial Empire. On intellec tual or academic plane there was not much contact nor much information about Lamaism or Lama polity. The Confucir·.n literati's indifference about Tibet or Mongolia came to be accepted by Western scholars; Sinologists in particular have evinced the same temper-contempt and hostility-about 'barbarian peoples' now designated 'na1ional minorities'. It is therefore a break with tr'!-dition that a leading Sinologist with devo tion and loyalty to Confucian culture and Confucian literature would spend several years (? a decade) in a study of Tibetan tradition and Tibetan political system. Professor Franz Michael claims no profi ciency in the language and has no direct access to literary ~ources in Tibetan. It is however evid(cnt from the book he has written that in his years of retirement, after teaching Chinese history and culture for three decades, he has put in such hard work which would put to shame many young scholars who claim to break new grounds. Industry with imagination is a well known fealure of German scholarship. It may be mentioned that Franz Michael is a German 36 who resigned from German diplomatic service when Hitler carne to power in 1933 and was in the universities of China teaching Political Science and History till World War II. At the end of the War he settled in U.S.A. teaching Chinese and Far Eastern courses, successi vely at Johns Hopkins University, University of Washington and George Washington University. The author compensates for his lack of knowledge of Tibetan language with industry and imagination as did Max Weber in study of different religions. The author took his degree in Jurisprudence/Political Science in Weimer Germany and was close to the circle of Max Weber. The author held prolonged conversations and dialogues with Tibetans in exile, from the Dalai Lama down to the ordinary Khampa farmer. Among his many collaborators and interpreters were Kungo Tsarong, son of Kalon Tsarong and the eminent scholar Lobsang Lhalung pa, the erstwhile monk official. A critical mind like the author's cannot go far wrong with such associates and colleagues and I must confess I have found the book very worthy. It reveals the Lama polity as a viable system and makes many points which the experts with ling uistic prowess have not placed before the world so far. In my knowledge there is only one scholar who has mastery over classical and colloquial Tibetan, who has on-the-spot knowledge of Tibet for years and who was a close onlooker of monastic and govern mental institutions of Tibet for years. This rare combination is Mr. Hugh Edward Richardson, who however is more busy with archiv~'S, epigraphs and antiquities of Tibet than the Lama polity. I mention Hugh Richardson as I find the author has not consul ted him nor seems to have read Richardsons's Tibetan Precis (194,,), 'Karmapa Sect, a historical note' (jRAS, London 19,8-9), or 'The Poli tical Role of the Four Sects in Tibetan History' (Tibetan Review 1976 ). I also wish the author had read writings of Tn:vor Ling, Bardwell Smith or lesser beings like me about the doctrinal authority of the monks to temporal rule. Such readings would have redressed the balance of the book here and there, and in the event slips could have been avoided. I admit that the account presented by Franz Michael suffers from a number of errors and omissions; several may be termed major. Yet I would say without hesitation that Franz Michael's study is one to be reckoned with and no reader interested in Tibet md Tibetan poli tical institutions can afford to ignore the book. 1 would discuss at length my differences with the author on several points later in the pages of this journal or elsewhere. In this introductory notice I highlight the 37 merits of a book which indeed fills a gap in our knowledge of So ciety and State in Tibet that is now past. The most important contribution of the author is that though not well grounded in the language, he has ably exposed the misnomers and misgivings of Western experts on Tibet. A social scientist close to Max: Weber, the author rejects the label feudal or feudalism as alto gether inapplicable to traditional Tibet. The author finds adequate and authentic data to challenge the English rendering of the Tibetan word 'miser' into "serf" and in my opinion rightly substitutes the term "subject" or "commoner". With the consolidation of Buddhist church, that is, Lamaist Order, the old aristocrats became public ser vants or servants of the state and eventually the monks became superior to the aristocrats. When the Yellow Sect hierarch, the Dalai Lama, emerged as the temporal as well as spiritual ruler of Tibet, the aristocrats, old or new, would cultivate good relations with the monas tic leaders to have their sons admitted into government ranks. The admission tests and training courses, however, would do credit to a bureaucratic system and the author has no hesitation to call the Tibetan polity a bureaucracy. I may add that no amount of cultivating the monks would ensure finds of incarnations in aristocrat families. As is borne out from facts of all sects of Tibet, incarnations have generally been found in ordinary, if not poor, families. Of the 14 Dalai Lamas only three were found in aristocratic households. "Rule by Incarnation" is the main title of the book. As the author has found, the first bid for temporal rule by a monastic head, the Sakya hierarch, did not go far while the rule by the Karmapa incar nations introduced a spiritual sanction. The first Gyalwa Karmapa was born in I 110 and the first Gyalwa Rimpoche (Dalai Lama) was born in 1391. When the lineage of Dalai Lama was indisputably recognized as the lineage of Avalokitesvara (Chen-re-zi), rule by incar nation was a fait accompli and this phenomenon continued undisturbed till the middle of this century. A book cannot be ignored because it is not written by a spe cialist or because the author has no proficiency over the language. We know of a big volume on Tibetan polity, prior to Yellow Sect, from an author who reads and speaks Tibetan very ably and we remember what a mess it was. Franz Michael I must say has given a coherent account of Society and State in traditional Tibet; and what a wealth of data he collected by his visits to the Himalayan Buddhist monasteries and to Tibetans in exile in India and elsewhere. I cite the sub-heads under the chapter 'Government Agencies and Procedures'. These are: Management of Economic Affairs; Law and Legal Procedures; The 38 Military; Foreign Affairs; and The Art of Healing and the Role of Oracles. There are eight chapters and each has sub-heads to interest readers about Tibet. I conclude with author's reference to the Western scholars' "excessive disregard of the oral tradition in non-Western societies". I congratulate a Western Sinologist who has studied Tibet with sympathy. -" [This review is published in Tibetan Review for Auguut 198+. I have the kind permission of the Review to publish this in this Bulletm.] Nirmal C. Sinha Tibetan Studies in Honour of Hugh Richardson. Edited by Michael Aris and Aung San Suu Kyi. Warminster: Aris & Phillips, 1980. Pp XX, 348, illustrations. Tibetan studies, now deSignated Tibetology, are presumed to be concerned only with Religion and Language. This notion is most prevalent in India despite the fact that the two pioneers, Alexander Csoma de Koros and Sa rat Chandra Das, had unveiled the diverse contents of Tibetan literature. The book under review records the proceedings of a seminar on Tibetan studies held in Oxford 1979. The seminar had thediffe rent sections as follows-The Interior: Religion and Philosophy; The Interior: Linguistics and Bibliography; The Interior: Music, Medicine and Arts; The Interior: Further Considerations; The Western Border Lands and Ladakh; The Northern Border Lands and Mongolia; The Eastern Border Lands and China; and The Southern Border Lands and India.

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